No NNTP??? :(

[Harbs.]

I access the forums almost exclusively through Thunderbird. I generally write and respond to posts while I'm not actively connected to the internet. Without good e-mail access, I will not be able to participate in the forums. (at least not the way I do now)

Is there at least going to be decent alternatives?

Signed,
A very unhappy Harbs :(

[john_cornicello__retired_]

The "offline" options out of the starting gate will be RSS (one-way) and email. By setting up some email rules or maybe using a special Gmail account dedicated to the Forums, you can do full participation without having to visit the forum.

[Guest]

lots of corporations don't allow external email accounts to be accessed from company hardware due to security concerns...

[excited_Genie16B8]

I like the lack of NNTP. Users posting through such always quote the entire message (annoying) and have a hard carriage return at 78 characters or something, instead of the preferred HTML "wide as the post" return.

[Ramón_G_Castañeda]

What Jim Simon says!

[Curt Wrigley]

Lack of NNTP may help the dreaded 3 page quoted posts that are so annoying, but I suspect the email sourced posts will do the same thing.

As annoying as the formating (or lack of formatting) of the non web sourced posts are, many of the more helpful people use NNTP to post. Its Very effecient for someone who checks more than 1 forum. So, I can see and respect the NNTP users frustration with the dropping of NNTP support.

But; alas I do think it is the way of things. At least in the image/video world, posting in line images or video sometimes could save pages of posts. Its true a picture is worth 1000 words. Its difficult to support the multimedia apps with text only.

Curt

[John_Cornicello_Photo]

The email system appears to not do quotes. There is a bunch of info in the emails (body text, link to the message, poster name, link to the poster's profile, etc.). But when replying, only the newly typed text goes through.

[Kath-H]

From the Dreamweaver forum:

>For most of us regular posters the newsgroup access is simply the preferred way. Using the web forum would be much more inconvenient and far slower, which might result in much less answers given to the people who need them. Why should we do that? Especially for people who are reading almost every thread and trying to answer most of them, one thing is most important: efficiency. The newsgroup _is_ efficient, the web forum is not.

[Curt Wrigley]

> The newsgroup _is_ efficient, the web forum is not.

Change is hard. I had that same attitude toward windows. It was so much slower and less effecient than DOS. Sometimes a lower common denominator is better overall, than efficiency for a few. I

[Kath-H]

Looking through a thread on the Dreamweaver forum - I went there because I knew it was one of those on 'the other side', testing my login - I see reams of autoquotes that make the posts unreadable without huge effort. I suspect there will be a lot of people very, very unhappy to lose their NNTP access.

[Chris Cox]

The former Macromedia product forums are predominantly NNTP users -- mostly because the web front end to those forums has historically been too slow, ugly, and buggy to be useful.

Will they prefer the web front end if given one that is responsive, readable, and stable? Only time will tell.

If we are supporting email posting, we will need some sort of "excessive quoting" filter.

[John_Cornicello_Photo]

I don't anticipate a quoting issue with email. From what I've seen, the system does a great job of picking out the actual comment from the message. A user would have to consciously copy/paste the quoted info to get it to show up. You should not be able to distinguish between a web post or a mail post.

[Chris Cox]

Oh, if I could just get that system for our prerelease forums....

[Guest]

second that, Chris.

[Erik Lord]

NNTP is a huge loss. From what I've seen in various discussions on this, the two objections are 1) poor trimming of autoquotes from those replying via NNTP and 2) the general disinterest in Adobe hosting the NNTP server that the new forum software *has a gateway* to support.

Both of those seem silly for the amount of objection to dropping NNTP. The first could be handled by a simple request to the NNTP responders (I almost always trim my posts, but do forget on occasion). And, heck, I'll setup an NNTP server in our datacenter if Adobe can't handle it.

I definitely understand the advantages to web forums with all the glitz, but for those trying to respond to as many posts as possible in the short time we may have available, I've yet to see a web interface anywhere near as efficient as NNTP.
Erik

[Guest]

It can be added in later... it won't be forgotten because the people that it is important to won't let it be. Can we let that part rest for now and concentrate on getting it up and running, then start tweaking it? And, believe me.... I've got my own list also!!

[Ann_Shelbourne1]

I suggest that you DON'T get it "up and running" until you have cleaned-up the format not unless you want to lose most of your regular contributors.

[Guest]

I don't think formatting comes into consideration when we're talking about NNTP, Ann - NNTP, in my limited understanding, is a matter of text content only.

[Jay_Chevako]

Dorothy K wrote:
>It can be added in later...

Do you know this for a fact or is it just speculation?
Jay

[Kath-H]

I would speculate pretty confidently that it's speculation.

[Guest]

It requires setting up a NNTP server and doing all kinds of whatever to link the two together. I don't know the technicalities of how it's done but I do know that it possible. Time will tell if Adobe (not John) becomes willing to do it. At this point, not.

[Jay_Chevako]

So you are speculating that it's possible, but you admit that Adobe doesn't want to implement it even IF they could. Newsreader users are out of luck. Stop trying to pretend otherwise, and we can let it rest.
Jay

[Guest]

Adobe may feel they don't have the resources to apply to it at this point. Hard to argue with as we don't know the resource implications and availability.

[Guest]

All the companies I see just flat out don't allow news groups nor chat. It is not secured protocols. Most don't even let pop3 and smtp beyond their firewalls. Most support that's available by companies uses the web to setup their own form of chat and "see your computer screen"... because most companies allow port 80 to go out. Many companies use the web for interbusiness these daze. They do ensure nothing dangerous comes back, such as activex or packages of most kinds. So, I'm not sure how NNTP is going to come across with everyone in general.

[paleolith]

I too like NNTP, but admit that it has lost. The world has gone to web forums without my permission.

Had NNTP evolved, it would still be viable. But NNTP has no formatting and no attachments, and the majority of NNTP newsreaders don't follow basic common sense.

So I hate to see it go, but hope that Adobe will do a better job of a web forum than most. The majority of web forums are outright poor in appearance and usability, and are no improvement over the NNTP protocol that hasn't changed significantly in 15 years.

Edward